Computer networks are collections of hardware and software that connect computers and allow them to send information from one computer to another electronically. A computer network is comprised of the physical hardware connections between the various computers, for example telephone lines or a coax cable, and the software used to send and receive data and to route the data to the selected computer on the network.
A local area network (LAN) is a network connection between computers in close proximity, typically less than one mile, and usually connected by a single cable such as coax cable. A wide area network (WAN) is a network of computers located at longer distances, often connected by telephone lines or satellite links. Network software may sometimes be used with both types of networks. For example, a popular network is the Department of Defense internetworking protocol suite, known as Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This system was originally developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and has now been widely distributed to Universities and industry.
When a network is fast growing, that is, network elements or nodes are being added frequently, a network administrator may not know all of the nodes connected to the network. Also, a network administrator new to his or her job may not be familiar with the nodes on the network. Determining the nodes manually is a difficult problem. A second problem associated with a manual operation is the time necessary to draw a graph of the network. The nodes on a network and their interconnections are best displayed in a graphical format.
A network can be viewed from different perspectives, depending on the scope of the view desired. For example, if a network is connected to an internet, such as TCP/IP described above, one view of the network would be a very wide encompassing view of all nodes on the entire TCP network. A second view might be a view of those portions of a network within a local range, for example, within a particular site or building. A third view of a network, often called a segment, might be a view of the nodes attached to a particular local area network cable. Manually drawing a graphical representation of each of these views of a network is a very tedious and time-consuming problem. While a segment view of the nodes attached to it a particular LAN cable may not change very often, a network view encompassing an entire building or site may change more frequently, and an internet view usually changes very frequently. Updating each of these views on a manual graphical representation is extremely tedious. Furthermore, when a new node is added to the graph, the existing nodes on the graph may need to be moved in order to make room for the new node. For manual graphical representations, this also a very tedious procedure. If many new nodes are added to a network, the graph may need to be scaled in order to keep it within an acceptable size limit. For manual graphs, this involves an entire re-drawing of the graph. Lastly, manual graphing techniques cannot easily represent whether a node on a network is currently active or inactive.
There is need in the art then for a method of quickly displaying the nodes on a network. There is further need in the art for automatically redisplaying nodes periodically, as nodes activate and deactivate. A still further need is for graphically displaying different levels of a network to suit different needs of an administrator. Yet another need is to redisplay the graph each time a node is added or deleted.